Could you tell us how you came to specialize in wedding photography and how was your passion for it born ?

After having studied photography at a school in Paris, France, I wanted to work right away for individual clients in order to offer them images that were different than the ones they knew. Furthermore, at the time, I found that the photos present in this field were very conventional which encouraged me to propose my own more contemporary style. Wedding reporting is an excellent subject which unites several shooting techniques like photojournalism or portraiture; that suited me perfectly.

Is there a specific process you follow to choose a specific location, the setups and the moods ?

The location is often dictated by the wedding planning.  It’s that constraint that I enjoy—being able to find the right angle, good lighting.  My images use very little staging; what counts is the spontaneity and the sense of framing which tells a story.

Wedding photography is plagued with cliches, yet your work obviously avoids them and sets a very high standard for wedding imagery. What do you do to set your work apart, what makes every wedding a special event ?

I photograph as I would like to be photographed: simply, waiting for the deciding moment to click. A good wedding report is a report first and foremost about the story of a couple with their own emotions. That’s what makes each wedding unique. It’s important to arrive on the day of the report without any preconceived ideas, but rather to be listening to the couple, to be able to catch all that is natural on that day.

What creative process do you go through in order to capture the emotion of the bride and groom ?

On top of discretion which is indispensable to capture a good image, I uniquely use ambient light to maintain the natural tone of my photographs. I am hugely inspired by the great photojournalists of the Magnum agency who, for example, know how to tell a story with photographs. A good image is first and foremost the framing which must be precise and rigorous and the quality of the light must enhance the subject.

Do you see any trends or fashions taking place in wedding photography that you look towards with interest or seek to avoid ?

With digital, I see a lot of the “Photoshop effect” which doesn’t match my vision of photography. It seems to me that aesthetically we’re going back to the 1980s when wedding photography had its most uninteresting period in history. It is important to think of the fact that the bride and groom are going to keep their album for a long time and therefore there must be something timeless, not attached to a fashion or style of the moment.

What makes an ideal client, how could a client relate to you, what should a couple know and do in order to enable you to do your best work ?

For good photos, you need trust. That’s what I instill with my clients. And then I ask them to take full advantage of the day, to forget that they’re being photographed and filmed—to be what they are. Love and fun!

Could you share with us an anecdote of a fun, disastrous or thrilling moment while shooting a wedding ?

Once, but really only once in 10 years of reporting, did the groom really not like his bride’s dress. I’ll let you imagine what happened next…